The London Pulpit Part 8

And this religion of humanity is to be met with in Finsbury Square. I am not aware there is anything new about it. Every school-boy is familiar with it in Pope's Universal Prayer; but latterly, in Germany, in England, and across the Atlantic, it has been preached with an eloquence of peculiar fascination and power. Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson have been the high priests in the new temple, which fills all s.p.a.ce, and whose worship is all time. In England, as an organisation, whatever it may have done as a theory, it has not succeeded. Here William Johnson Fox, originally a student at the Independent Academy, Homerton, then a Unitarian minister, and now the member for Oldham, and the 'Publicola' of the 'Dispatch,' has been its most eloquent advocate. If any man could have won over the people to it, he, with his unrivalled rhetoric-rhetoric which, during the agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, will be remembered as surpa.s.sing all that has been heard in our day-would have done it; and yet Fox never had his chapel more than comfortably full-not even when the admission was gratis, and any one who wished might walk in.

But now the place has a sadly deserted appearance. You feel cold and chilly directly you enter. The mantle of Fox has not fallen on his successor; and what Mr. Fox could not accomplish, most certainly the Rev.

Mr. Ierson will not perform.

At half-past eleven service every Sunday morning commences at the chapel in South Place. You need not hurry: there will be plenty of room for bigger and better men than yourself. The worship is of the simplest character. Mr. Ierson commences with reading extracts from various philosophical writers, ancient and modern; then there is singing, not congregational, but simply that of a few professionals. The metrical collection used, I believe, is one made by Mr. Fox, and is full of beautiful poetry and sublime sentiments; but the congregation does not utter it-it merely listens while it is uttered by others for it. Singing is followed by prayer. 'Prayer,' says Montgomery (James, not Robert)-

'is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpress'd, The motion of a hidden fire, That trembles in the breast.'

Mr. Ierson's prayer is nothing of the kind: no fire trembles in the breast while it is offered up. It is a calm, rational acknowledgment of Divine power and goodness and beauty. Then comes an oration of half an hour, the result of no very hard reading, and the week's worship is at an end, and the congregation, princ.i.p.ally a male one, departs, not much edified, or enlightened, or elevated, but, perhaps, a little puffed up, as it hears how the various sects of religionists all, like sheep, go astray. Such must be the inevitable result. You cannot lecture long on the errors of Christians, without feeling convinced of your own superiority. The youngest green-horn in the chapel has a self-satisfied air. Beardless though he be, he is emanc.i.p.ated. The religion which a Milton could make the subject of his immortal strains-which a Newton could find it consistent with philosophy to accept-which has found martyrs in every race, and won trophies in every clime-he can pa.s.s by as an idle tale or an old wife's dream.

Mr. Ierson himself is better than the imaginary disciple I have just alluded to. He has got to his present position, I believe, by honest conviction and careful study. Originally, I think, he was a student at the Baptist College, Stepney; then he became minister over a Baptist congregation at Northampton, and there finding his position at variance with his views, he honestly relinquished his charge. I fear such honesty is not so common as it might be. I believe, in the pulpit and the pew, did it exist, our religious organisations would a.s.sume a very different aspect. The great need of our age, it seems to me, is sincerity in religion-that men and women, that pastor and people, should plainly utter what they think. I believe there is a greater freedom in religious thought than really appears to be the case. 'How is it,' said I to a Unitarian, the other day, 'that you do not make more progress?' 'Why,'

was the answer, 'we make progress by other sects taking our principles, while retaining their own names:' and there was truth in the reply.

Still, it is better that a man who ceases to be a Churchman, or a Baptist, or an Independent, should say and act as Mr. Ierson has done.

He will lose nothing in the long run by honesty-not that I take it Mr.

Ierson has achieved any great success, but he gives no sign of any great talent. He is not the man to achieve any great success. People who believe his principles will stop at home unless there is in the pulpit a man who can draw a crowd. Fox could scarcely do this. Such men as Ronge, or Ierson, or Macall, who lectured to some forty people in the Princess's Concert Booms, cannot do it at all. Mr. Brooke might, if he could be spared from Drury Lane-so could Macready or d.i.c.kens, or Thackeray; but in these matters everything depends upon the man.

Of course the first question is, thus emanc.i.p.ated-Why worship at all? why rise betimes on a Sunday, shave at an early hour, put on your best clothes, and, mindless of city fog and dirt, rush hurriedly to South Place, Finsbury Square? If I take the New Testament literally, I take with it the command relative to the a.s.sembling of ourselves together, and have a scriptural precedent for a course sometimes very wearisome and very much against the grain; but with free reason, an emanc.i.p.ated man, the case is altered. I am in a different position altogether. Custom is all very well to the holders of customary views. I expect a secret feeling lies at the bottom, that, after all, church and chapel going is good-that worship in public is a service acceptable to Deity.

It may be, and this I believe is the great secret of the success of churches and chapels, that people don't know how to spend their Sundays, especially in country towns, without going to a place of worship. You cannot dine directly you have had your breakfast; you must allow an interval. Now, you cannot, especially if it looks as if it would rain, and your best hat might be damaged, fill up that time better than in a place of worship. So, even Mr. Ierson gets a congregation, although it is made up of people who see in him a man not a whit more qualified to teach religious truth than themselves, and who maintain the right of individual reason, in matters of religion, to its fullest extent. He has no claim to being heard; yet they go to hear him. They claim the right of private judgment; yet they take his. Worship, in its ordinary sense, they deem unnecessary; yet they approach to it as nearly as they can.

Such is the incongruity between the religious instinct on the one side, and the logical faculty on the other-an incongruity, however, proclaiming that, reason as you will, man is a religious animal after all; that he has the faculty of worship, and must worship; that, take from him his sacred books-his Shaster, his Koran, or Bible-still the heart is true to its old instincts, and believes, and adores, and loves. True is it, that man, wherever he may be, whatever his creed or colour, still

'Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven.'

THE IRVINGITES.

Are the days of Pentecost gone never to return? Have miracles ceased from amongst men? Cannot signs and wonders still be wrought by men filled with the Holy Ghost? The larger part of the Christian Church answers this question in the negative. It teaches that the miracles are dumb, that the need of them has past away, that in the fulness of time the Divine will was made known, and that the Church needs not now the signs and wonders by which that revelation was attested and declared.

A large body, however, has lately sprung up amongst us, holding opposite views. Enter their churches, and, according to them, the gift of tongues still exists-signs and wonders are still manifest-miracles are still wrought. Still, as much as in apostolic times, does the Divine afflatus dwell in man, and the man so endued becomes a prophet, and declares the will of G.o.d in known or unknown tongues.

For some time past, a magnificent Gothic Cathedral has been in process of being built in Gordon Square. It stands near where once stood Coward College, and where still stands University Hall, a Unitarian College, and not far from the University College, which a certain Ex-Lord-Chancellor took under his especial care. On Christmas Day it was thrown open for the performance of the worship of 'The Holy Catholic Apostolic Church,' a body better, perhaps, known to the community at large as Irvingites, or followers of Edward Irving. Originally, I believe, the sect sprang up in Scotland, and Edward Irving merely joined it, and the form of worship which now prevails was not fully established till after his death. After Irving left the Scotch Church, the body took refuge in Newman Street, where they have remained till the present magnificent place was opened.

There are to be seven cathedrals in London; each cathedral is to have four places of worship attached to it; and to each service in a cathedral appertain an evangelist, an apostle, a prophet, and an angel. The angel is the presiding spirit, an apostle seems to be what a bishop is in the English Church. There is an apostle for England, another for France, another for America, and another for Germany. To every cathedral there are twenty-four priests. The angel is magnificently clad in purple, the sign of authority. The next order, the prophets, wear blue stoles, indicative of the skies whence they draw their inspiration. The evangelists wear red as a sign of their readiness to shed their blood in the cause.

The Cathedral is well attended: upwards of 1000 communicants are connected with it. Service takes place in it several times a-day, and on the Sunday evening a sermon is preached, which is intended to enlighten and to win over such as are not connected with the church. Many distinguished persons are office-bearers in the church, such as Admiral Gambier, the Hon. Henry Parnell, J. P. Knight, R.A., Mr. Cooke, the barrister, Major Macdonald; while Lady Dawson, Lady Bateman, Lady Anderson, are amongst its members. Henry Drummond, the eccentric M.P.

for East Surrey, has the credit of being connected with this place; but, while it is true that he is an Irvingite, it is not true that he is an office-bearer of the church. Those who join the church offer a tenth of their annual income towards its support, and this promise, it is believed, year after year is faithfully kept. The Cathedral itself is an evidence of the liberality of the people. Attached to the church is a small, but very elegant, chapel, which is to be used on rare occasions, and which was raised by the ladies, who contributed the magnificent sum of 4000 in aid of the work. The chief beauty of the church, however, is the altar, which is carved out of all sorts of coloured marble, and is superbly decorated. The service-book put into your hands is called 'The Liturgy and Divine Offices of the Church,' but I do not learn from the members of the body that they think themselves exclusively the church, and that there is no salvation out of their pale. They merely profess to be one portion of the church, to take within their comprehensive fold members of all other churches; and this, to a very considerable extent, has been the case. The Irvingites have taken their converts not from the world, but the church. They have made proselytes, not Christians: the members of other churches have come over to them. In their ranks are many Dissenters and Churchmen, and amongst their priests are many who have been clergymen in connection with the Dissenters or the Church of England. They profess to be above the common distinction by which sect is fenced off from sect-Catholic and Protestant come alike to them.

The Liturgy appears to be compiled from the rituals of the Greek, Anglican, and Roman Churches, with a slight preponderance to the latter.

The apostle of the church is Mr. John Cardall, formerly a lawyer's clerk, but called to his present office, as he himself states, about twenty years ago, by the voice of prophecy. This call is acknowledged by the community. He rules the whole body with irresponsible authority. He is the final appeal. On his decision everything rests. He claims spiritual preeminence over not only the churches in his own communion, but over all the churches of all baptized Christians throughout the world, nay, over all bishops, priests, and deacons, Anglican, Greek, or Roman, not excepting even the Pope himself. The Liturgy and Service-book is understood to be his compilation. He has also published a work, ent.i.tled 'Readings upon the Liturgy,' which is privately circulated, and is said, by those who have seen it, to be an interesting and peculiar book, abounding in the interpretations of the symbols and types of the Old Testament, and an ingenious endeavour to adapt them to the purposes of the Christian Church at the present day. In the Liturgy, besides what is found in that of the English Church, there are prayers for the dead, invocation of saints, transubstantiation. The authority of the church, the power of the priesthood, and the existence of actual living apostles to rule the church universal, are acknowledged and enjoined. The chief minister of the church, or, as he is called, the angel or bishop, is Mr.

Christopher Heath, who, for many years, carried on business in the neighbourhood of the Seven Dials. He was also called miraculously to his present post. The other ministers, of whom there are a vast number, are all well paid for their services, on an average much better than many London inc.u.mbents. Several of them have been military men: they are not formally educated for their work, but called to it. They are not man-made ministers-they claim a Divine sanction and power. Nor are they taken from the well-educated cla.s.ses. They a.s.sert that the Spirit may qualify any man, no matter how humble his occupation or his birth. Some of them, I am told, have been tailors, tinkers, shoemakers, barbers, but are now filled with divine light, and may do the signs and wonders done by the apostles in an earlier day.

With apostolic pretensions, these men are careless of apostolic simplicity. They must meet, not in an upper room, but in a gorgeous cathedral; they must array themselves in grotesque garments; they must have tapers and incense-Roman Catholic forms and ceremonies. One would have thought that the name of Edward Irving would have been kept free from such things; that his followers would have been above them; that they would as much as most realize the spirituality of Him who dwells not in houses made with hands, and whose temple is the lowly and contrite heart. Genius like Irving's would have lent grandeur to a barn; and now the master is gone, and having no more an orator to enchant them, the church worships in fretted aisles-treads mosaic pavements-rejoices in fine music and elaborate ceremonial.

Thus always is it: when nature fails, men have recourse to art. We have no actors now, but, instead, we have a stage splendidly decorated, regardless of expense. We put Shakspere on the stage in a way that would astonish Shakspere himself: but we have no Shakspere. Is not this a sign of weakness? When a beauty betakes herself to jewellery, and invests herself with borrowed graces, is it not a sign that Time is dealing in his old-fashioned cruel way with the rose upon her cheek and the l.u.s.tre in her eye? and is it not so with the Irvingite Church? Is not its pomp and splendour a sign that it is not so rich in apostolic gifts as it claims to be? Paul, I think, would hardly feel himself at home in Gordon Square.

Since the above was written, the Census Report has appeared. It has a sketch supplied by a member of the Catholic Apostolic Church. From it we learn that that Church makes no exclusive claim to its t.i.tle. It acknowledges it to be the common t.i.tle of the one church baptized unto Christ. The members of that body deny that they are separatists from the Established Church. They recognise the continuance of the church from the days of the first apostles, and of the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons, by succession from the apostles. They justify their meeting in separate congregations from the charge of schism, on the ground of the same being permitted and authorized by an ordinance of paramount authority, which they believe G.o.d has restored for the benefit of the whole church. And, so far from professing to be another sect, they believe that their special mission is to unite the scattered members of the one body of Christ. The speciality of that religious belief-that by which they are distinguished from other Christian communities-consists in their holding apostles and prophets to be abiding ministeries in the church.

EDWARD MIALL, ESQ.

In these latter days men have come to think that no man has a right to enter a pulpit unless he prefixes Rev. to his name-unless he wears a white handkerchief round his neck, and scorns to get a living except from the revenues of the Church. With them a daw

'is reckoned a religious bird, Because it keeps a cawing from the steeple.'

You have been ordained, therefore some mysterious virtue attaches to you.

You have ceased to be a man, and become a priest. You live in a different world to what we common-place sinners do. The priest has a different tailor to the rest of mankind. We can tell him by his superfluity of white linen and superabundance of black cloth. We can tell him by the downcast eye and the short-cut hair. We know him not by his works, by the beauty of his living faith, or the savour of his holy life, but by his dress. The tailor makes us. One dummy it adorns with red, and that is a soldier. Another it dresses in fashionable costume, and that is the star of Bond-street and the lion of the ball-room.

Another it arrays in antiquated vest and sober black, and that's the divine. Manners do not make the man, but the tailor does.

Yet, happily, the world is not given up to universal flunkeyism. We have still some who recognise the G.o.d-like and divine in man; women not everlastingly falling in love with new bonnets, or manhood not utterly lost in the contemplation of new atrocities in the way of checks for trowsers or stupendous collars for the neck. Strange as it may seem, it is no more strange than true, that there are some who can see poets in shoemakers or whisky-gaugers; heroism in the daughters of fishermen; philosophy in Norwich weaver boys; apostles in tent-makers or Jewish sailors; and something greater and grander still in the 'Galilean Lord and Christ,' the faith in whose divine mission has made Europe and America the home of civilisation, of intelligence, and life. Faith in reality has not yet died out amongst us. There are still men who dare to take their stand on living and eternal truths-who look beyond the crust, and see the gem within-who see duty urging them on, and become insensible to aught else. Such men make martyrs-missionaries-reformers; on a small scale, such are village Hampdens or Miltons, inglorious and mute. Such men are sure, sooner or later, to have an earnest crowd of devotees, to exercise a powerful influence on their age, to be the teachers and founders of a school.

Of this cla.s.s, undoubtedly, Edward Miall, the editor of the 'Nonconformist,' is one of the latest. Originally a student at Wymondley College, then 'settled,' as the phrase is, at Ware, then the pastor of a respectable congregation at Leicester, he was M.P. for John Bright's own borough of Rochdale, and is, as the _Times_ confesses, a distinguished Nonconformist. I imagine few of my readers require a description of his thin and wiry frame. As a platform speaker, or as a mere orator, Miall is not very effective; he delights his admirers, but he does not do more.

In the pulpit, few men are more fitted to shine. Men enter a place of worship under different feelings to those with which they run to Exeter Hall or the London Tavern. In the one case you are in something of a reverential mood, and you are not disappointed by the want of physical power. With eternity for his theme, the preacher soon causes you to forget a feeble voice or a bodily presence not adapted for effect. The sermonising tone is in keeping with the pulpit, and if every word seem to have an air of preparation, and to tell of labour, you think that it is only after mature preparation a man should speak of religious truth to his fellow-men. Calm self-possession is essential to the sanctuary, and there you miss not the _abandon_ which elicits the cheers of an excited audience.

In the pulpit, Miall could always command attention. His manner, if somewhat artificial and prim, evinced the possession of a mind earnest and decided. His language was nervous; his views were broad and catholic. You felt that the man before you was no reproducer of other men's thoughts, no worn-out echo, no empty sound; that the Christianity he preached he had found to be good for the intellect and soul of man; that it was the foundation of all his knowledge; that on that, as a great fact, he had rested all the hopes and aspirations of his life. Seemingly void of all animalism-a rock with a gleam of sunlight on it-an incarnate idea-a voice crying in the wilderness-a reed, but not shaken with the wind-Edward Miall is an admirable ill.u.s.tration of what a man with a principle may do. It was a bold step for him to give up the pulpit and to start a newspaper; it was a still bolder thing to circulate that newspaper in the Dissenting world, with unmistakable quotations from Shakspeare staring you flat in the face, and to accustom that world, used to a very watery style of composition, to language remarkable for its elegance and power.

The effect was startling. Miall at once became the object of the intensest hero-worship. The old idols were utterly cast out and destroyed. Old gentlemen, who had led a pompous life for half a century, suddenly found themselves of no account. Their power had pa.s.sed away as a dream. Students in Dissenting Colleges went over _en ma.s.se_ to this second Daniel. It was a time of intense political excitement. The corn laws taxed the poor man's food; Chartism reared its hideous head; everywhere angry discontent prevailed. Miall thought the time had come for Christian men to interfere; he felt that the struggle for political rights was not inconsistent with the utmost purity of Christian life; that the Church, by its sanction of existing abuses and its reverential worship of the powers that were, had done much to alienate the popular mind from Christianity itself; he felt that the Church, loaded with State pay, would always be liable to suspicion, however excellent her creed or pure her clergy; and he felt, therefore, that in asking men's political rights, and the dissolution of the union between Church and State, he should demonstrate to the world that Christianity meant something more than corn-laws, or t.i.thes, or the celebrated Chandos clause-something more than a comfortable living for younger sons. It is false to suppose that Miall left the pulpit when he left Leicester. His labours in his new sphere were but a continuation of his labours in the old. In everything he was unchanged. He was merely continuing his Leicester work, appealing, not to a county-town, but to the nation at large. He had changed his platform; but his mission remained the same. Instead of using a feeble voice, he had recourse to a powerful pen. His pulpit was the editorial chair, his church the English race.

Place Miall in the pulpit, and a glance will tell you the man. You can see he has been brought up in a divinity college; he has all the prim and unfashionable air of youths reared in such secluded spots. His pale face tells of thought. You see in his small clear eye that thought crystallises in his brain. His clenched hand, his determined teeth, his shrugged-up shoulders, prepare you for the tenacity with which he clings to what thoughts come to him. On the hustings and elsewhere, Miall is the same-not elated when applauded, not depressed when reviled; unbending, imperturbable, mild of demeanour, yet inflexible in purpose.

Yet, after all, his success has been more personal than in what he has done. Who ever talks of complete suffrage now?-yet that was Miall's darling idea when he first appeared in the political world, and the a.s.sociation which calls him father-which is to emanc.i.p.ate religion from the fetters of the State-it must yet be confessed by its most ardent admirers, has got a considerable amount of work to do.

It does seem strange that so pale, calm, unmoved a man as Mr. Miall seems to be, should have wandered out of the pulpit and the study, with its old books and everlasting commentaries, and exchanged all that elysian dream-land for the fever of politics and the bustle of the newspaper. It seems stranger still that he should have succeeded, that he should have found favour with our turbulent democracy, not partial to the use of soap, or particularly pa.s.sionate in their attachment to abstract principles. Strangest of all is it that he should have managed to be returned as an M.P. We should have been the last to have prophesied for Miall such a career. Cato at the theatre, Colonel Sibthorp at a Peace Congress, an Irish patriot speaking common-sense, could not surprise us more. Yet that Miall has achieved what he has, shows how much may be done by the possessor of a principle. Miall is a principle, an abstract principle embodied-that man is everything, that the human being is divine, that the inspiration of the Almighty has given the meanest of us understanding. From the Bible he got that principle, and that is the unerring test by which every case is weighed and every difficulty solved.

In religion it led him to reject ecclesiastical organisations and claims, the traditions of the Fathers, the pretensions of divines-everything by which the priest is exalted and the people kept down. In politics, the same rule held good. If all men are equal-if G.o.d has made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth-what need for aristocratic usurpation or the legislation of a cla.s.s? If all are equal before G.o.d, surely they should all be equal before man. Thus, when angry Chartism was asking for universal suffrage, and the Church was preaching contentment and the duty of submission to superiors, and the danger to religion when a man became political, Miall felt that the time had come for him to step out of the conventional circle of the pulpit into a wider and freer sphere, and to show that Christianity was not alien to human right, and that a man might love G.o.d and his brother-man as well. It does seem strange now that men should ever have doubted so plain a truth.

How it was doubted some few years since, only men like Miall can tell.

Miall's Anti-State-Churchism was also obtained by a similar process. If there were no need of priests, if every man could be a priest unto G.o.d, what need of State patronage and pay? At the best they could but corrupt and enervate the Church. It was teaching it to rely on a worthless arm of flesh rather than on the living G.o.d.

With such views, Miall may surely be included in the 'London Pulpit.'

Tried by his own theory, he is a legitimate subject for a sketch. The truth he held in Leicester he holds in London, and he is still as much a divine in the 'Nonconformist' office as when he was pastor of an Independent Church. Occasionally he preaches in one or other of the metropolitan pulpits, and the studied discourse read-but read with admirable distinctness-is of a kind to make you regret that Miall is so seldom seen where he is fitted to do so much. If you have not an orator before you in the common acceptation of the term, you have before you a master of argument, gifted with a clearness of expression and a high order of thought, rare anywhere, especially in the pulpit now-a-days.

Buckingham wrote of Hobbes' style, that

'Clear as a beautiful transparent skin, Which never hides the blood, yet holds it in; Like a delicious stream it ever ran, As smooth as woman and as strong as man.'

Of Miall's style precisely the same may be said. It is always as clear, sometimes as cold, as ice. As a still further proof of Miall's claim to be considered a religious teacher, witness his 'British Churches' and his 'Basis of Faith,'-books eminently adapted for the age in which we live.

Yet Miall can speak to the poor, and does so. The teetotalers have built a hall called the Good Samaritan Hall, on Saffron Hill. It is a low neighbourhood. It is surrounded by the dwellings of the poor, and it is erected there as a light for that dark spot, by means of which the drunkard may emerge into a higher life. The last time I heard Miall was there: the room was full. On a table, dressed in an old blue great coat, stood Miall, preaching to men and women, gathered from the highways and byways, from the crowds for whose souls no one cares. Surely that was a finer sight than if, arrayed in lawn, he was preaching to the fashion and wealth of Vanity Fair.

CARDINAL WISEMAN.

Roman Catholicism seems part and parcel of human nature. Luther was not more a product of his age than Leo X. That one man should be a Papist seems as natural as that another man should be a Protestant. Our sects and schisms are not a very edifying sight. The greater number of them are eternally wrangling, and uttering at the best but discordant sounds.

Few of them make any provision for the sensuous, for the love of decency and order and solemn ceremonial, which is characteristic of some minds.

Many of them are actually contemptible when you come into close collision with them, and examine their working, and watch their effect. The harder, the more literal, the more matter-of-fact they are, the greater is the chance that some subjected to their discipline should rebel against it and become converts to the ancient faith. Mr. Lucas was a Quaker till he became the editor of the _Tablet_. It is very probable that Robert Owen may yet die in communion with Rome. The Roman Catholic Church offers unity-rest for the tempest-tossed-and to the young and the ardent and the impa.s.sioned an attractive worship and an imposing form.

By the side of it-the Protestant subst.i.tute for it-the Evangelical Alliance seems a poor thing indeed. Hence it is that the cry of Roman Catholic ascendancy has always been raised ever since the Church of England appropriated its wealth and seated itself in its place. It always has been in danger from the Church of Rome, and it always will.

Human nature is always the same. What has grown out of it at one time will grow out of it another. Heresy, as Sir Thomas Browne well put it, is like the river Arethusa, which in one place is lost sight of, but only to reappear further on. Each age has its own development. Each age but repeats the past, as the son in his turn reproduces the blunders and the youthful follies of his sire.

It is true we get wise, and-